Mountain Moral Monday event returns to Asheville

The Mountain People's Assembly announced it will host the return of Mountain Moral Monday

Rev. William J. Barber II, president of the NC NAACP, speaks to a crowd of thousands in Pack Square Park during Mountain Moral Monday last August. The Asheville event followed nearly three months of Moral Monday protests in Raleigh while the Republican-controlled legislature was in session.
(Photo:
Bill Sanders
,
wsanders@citizen-times.com
)

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The Mountain People's Assembly, a coalition of WNC organizations and regional NAACP branches, announced Tuesday that a rally will be held Aug. 4, likely drawing thousands to downtown Asheville.

The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP, will address the crowd, according to the group, along with several other local speakers to be announced. It is scheduled to run 5-6:30 p.m. at Pack Square Park. The NAACP

Organizer Elaine Lite said the event will focus on voting rights and empowerment, part of the statewide "Moral March to the Polls" campaign.

"The issues themselves haven't changed, in fact, if anything they've gotten worse," Lite said. "But the overarching umbrella is voting. We have the power and we have the choice come Election Day. We have to educate people, and more importantly to empower them."

Lite said speakers will address education, environmental concerns like fracking and coal ash, and voting rights.

Last year's Mountain Moral Monday was one of the largest protests in modern history for Western North Carolina, with crowd estimates as high as 10,000. The Moral Monday protests in Raleigh gained national attention last year, as thousands poured into Halifax Mall each week to protest decisions made in the statehouse throughout the session.

Groups that would typically be unlikely allies united over actions within the statehouse that impacted impacting education, health care, voting rights, women's rights, racial justice, environmental protections, municipal and county decision-making and other issues.

The event is billed as a nonpartisan event, though the related Moral Monday protests in Raleigh have focused on frustrations with Republican-led state policies. Republican lawmakers including Buncombe County Reps. Tim Moffitt and Nathan Ramsey attended last year's event.

More than 50 organizations listed as sponsors on the Mountain People's Assembly page run the gamut from the YWCA of Asheville and the Mountain Area Interfaith Forum to the Self-Help Credit Union and the Stephens-Lee Alumni Association.

Lite said five new NAACP branches have been formed in WNC since last year's protest.

The Raleigh Moral Monday protests have continued this year outside the state legislative offices, with many protesters still filing inside, where they face arrest.

New building rules adopted in May prohibited activities that would create an imminent disturbance in the Legislative Building, such as sounds that hindered someone's ability to have a conversation in a "normal tone of voice" and certain types of signs. Those provisions were shot down temporarily by a Wake County judge in June after the N.C. NAACP filed a suit arguing that the rules were unconstitutional, overly broad and vague.